Paradise Lost
Duke and Wolf rushed to the entrance of their little room and took position at either side of the opening. Duke checked his MP7 and sidearm, making sure they were ready for what was likely to be the single largest battle of his career.
He poked his head out and looked down the hall. The gryphons out there were in a tizzy, squawking and flipping out. They had probably found the body after a search urged by whoever contacted the team through their own comms. They would have to be careful what they said to each other until they linked up, since the enemy could hear every shared word over the comms.
Just as Duke started to retract his head, he could see the gryphons gathering at the end of the hall before him. He didn’t need to keep his head out to know they would all gather there before searching the hall. From where he was, he could hear someone shouting, and they sounded pretty pissed off. Understandably, of course, as Duke and Wolf snuck right past them.
As long as they were grouped up, it made the best target for Duke to start shooting. With a flick of his finger, he switched his weapon to full automatic, then nodded to Wolf. It was go time.
They rushed out of their cover and spotted the group of ten plus gryphons at the end of the hall. Duke knelt down and took aim, bracing himself for the rattling of his gun against his shoulder. One of the gryphons spotted him and Wolf and pointed at them. Duke opened fire, starting with him.
The suppressor made it much quieter, but it could only do so much, and the confined space of the cave left plenty of echo and echoing of the gunshots. The gryphons all flinched and faltered as the bullets started tearing into them. By the time they ran for cover behind the boxes and walls, four of them had gone down.
Duke and Wolf took their opportunity and rushed forward toward the room. Duke kept his gun aimed forward, ready to open fire again. He had probably fired about thirty rounds of his forty round magazine, so he provided some suppressing fire along the way and reloaded his weapon as soon as he heard the empty click.
Before they could make it to the end, the gryphons pointed crossbows around the corner an blindly fired at the human and stallion, forcing them to take cover in the rooms to their left and right. Their crossbows must have been specially modified, because they seemed to just keep firing the bolts around the corner. Duke and Wolf couldn’t risk continuing forward into the fire.
Duke pulled a frag grenade out, his last one, and pulled the pin. After waiting for a moment, he turned the corner and took aim.
“Frag out!” he shouted. Wolf crouched behind the wall on his side, and Duke did the same.
The grenade flew through the air and smacked into the boxes within the room. A moment later, a deafening boom blasted through the cave, sending a shockwave past Duke and Wolf. As soon as it was gone, they turned their corners and continued their rush down the hallway.
When they reached the end, there were two bodies lying still on the floor and two struggling to get up. Duke put one in each of the survivor’s heads in seconds, then turned his attention upward to check for aerial attackers. Instead, he saw gryphons shooting out of the hole he had seen earlier, one by one, until at least eight had come out.
“Dammit,” Duke cursed.
“We gotta fight through it,” Wolf said.
“Let’s get to it,” Duke replied.
Duke and Wolf stuck together and moved to the right with Wolf on point, going the way they had come earlier. If they could minimize their visual exposure, that would work out perfectly, because it would take extra time for the gryphons to get to them and they could possibly get out without too much fighting.
That turned out to be a bad idea, as the gryphons were waiting for them and fired a dozen crossbows as soon as Wolf was in sight. The quick stallion flinched back and dodged most of the bolts, but one cut into his front left foreleg, leaving a cut at least half an inch deep. He neighed from the pain, a sound Duke actually had yet to hear from the ponies, and Duke grabbed him and pulled him back.
Wolf looked at the gash, grimaced, then seemed to stop caring about it a moment later. Duke would offer to fix him up, but the moment called for a little something else.
“Can’t believe this,” Wolf said angrily.
Duke looked up. “I have an idea,” he said.
They were still taking crossbow fire from the other side, the bolts constantly thunking against the boxes that served as cover. Duke climbed up one box, then grabbed the corner of the top box and pulled it back just enough so the edge was over them, then got under it. With a powerful thrust of his arm, he sent the top box tumbling to the other side, spilling weapons and armor everywhere as it went down.
In the deafening collection of clangs, Duke and Wolf ran around to the other side. The distraction wouldn’t last very long, so they had to move fast.
When they reached the other side, Duke took point and leaned around the corner with his weapon pointed forward. There were indeed gryphons on this side, but they had been just distracted enough by the crash of their contraband that Duke was able to put three well-placed shots into three of the five before the other two flew backwards, one simply falling down and tumbling to the floor.
Wolf rushed out toward the next group of boxes and Duke followed close behind, pointing at where the other gryphons were and putting down suppressing fire. He spotted one gryphon who took a lucky shot to the head, startling the rest of them into moving again.
Duke rejoined Wolf behind cover and looked him over to make sure he was okay. Wolf was looking angry, but otherwise unaltered from his normal state besides his gash. He had his blades out, but in here, the big room, he would have to take some risk to get up to the enemies to use them.
But he had something else on his person too.
“Wolf, you got those explosive orbs?” Duke asked. He already knew he did.
“Yeah,” Wolf said.
No other words were needed, and Wolf pulled out an orb, smacked it to arm it, then chucked it overhead toward where the gryphons had just been. They couldn’t be too far, and even if they were, there would undoubtedly be quite a bit of shrapnel with all the metal around the room.
A massive explosion rang through the room, though Duke and Wolf were shielded by their boxes. The overhead light was blown to bits by the blast, darkening the room fairly completely. In the aftermath of the explosion, only the groans of the wounded could be heard echoing through the cave as they rapidly passed away.
Duke had his night vision for the darkness and planned to use it well. Wolf was sadly stuck in the dark, but as long as they stayed quiet and in contact, they would be able to simply walk out of the room.
“Keep close,” Duke whispered.
“Roger,” Wolf replied.
Duke led Wolf onward into the darkness with his eyes and weapon forward. He heard some flapping overhead in the front, but when he looked up, he saw a gryphon fly smack into the stone wall and crumple as he fell to the ground. He hit the stone floor below with a sickening crack. That pretty much took care of him.
Duke heard a few gryphons recovering elsewhere in the room, but when he looked up, he didn’t see them ascending. Instead, he saw more gryphons descending into the room, four in total, from that damn hole up there. They were all sticking together up at the top, and upon closer inspection, Duke saw them fidgeting with some sticks in their hands.
He realized what they were just in time and looked away when four incredibly bright blue flares illuminated the entire room. Wolf was temporarily blinded, but kept quiet as a church mouse, and Duke raised his night vision off of his face.
The gryphons tossed the blue flares toward various spaces in the room, then activated a few more and looked around for places to throw them. Wolf recovered quickly, and the duo ran for the entrance as more flares came raining down. As they ran, one of the flares landed right in their path, and they weren’t able to stop before running right over it.
There was an exclamation of glee as they ran over the flare, and Duke knew that the gryphons were going to come down on them. He and Wolf moved to press their backs against one of the stacks of boxes and crates and were suddenly greeted by four gryphons brandishing dirks.
Duke opened fire right away, putting four shots in the one all the way to the left and getting two into the next one before they were upon him and Wolf. The injured gryphon stayed back for a moment, letting his unwounded comrades take the front.
A big gryphon with darkly painted feathers assaulted Duke with a flurry of movement, made that much harder to track in the dark shade of blue that bathed the room. He ducked to the right and let the dirk strike into the crate, where it didn’t get stuck, but could not advance downward and strike into Duke.
Unable to raise his MP7 in the limited space, Duke thrust his knee up and caught the gryphon in the belly, knocking the breath clean out of its lungs. It wasn’t about to let that stop it, though, and it threw Duke to the side and knocked away his gun.
Duke stood up and went to draw his pistol, but the gryphon was on top of him and slashed at his face. Duke moved back just enough that it only caught him slightly on the cheek, and the gryphon had expected that to be the final cut. Duke countered with a spinning elbow strike to the side of the gryphon’s head, sending it crashing into the crates.
Duke leapt to where his weapon fell, grabbed it, and rolled over to open fire on the gryphon before it could come closer. It was about to land on top of him when he let out a full auto burst into its belly, shredding it from front to back. By the time it landed on top of him, it was already extremely dead.
Duke shoved the body away and looked to Wolf, who had already killed his opponent and dispatched the wounded gryphon before it could get away. Wolf offered Duke a hoof, which he gladly accepted, and the duo stood to run to the entrance where they would link up with the team.
Frost ran to the door with his rifle raised scanned the outside room before leaving. There weren’t any hostile gryphons here yet, so it gave him and the stallions some time before they had to move. Even if it was a precious few seconds to link up and make a split-second plan, it was still something.
Frost sprinted through the large room to where the Nighthawks were and leapt into the room, shutting the door behind him. The Nighthawks were huddled around, discussing a pan of battle, and turned to see him run in. They had their weapons brandished as if Frost were an enemy, as they could easily have been the ones who rushed into the room.
“Frost,” Aprotelese said.
“We don’t have a lot of time before they come after us,” Frost said. “We need to move fast.”
“There’s only one way out that we know of,” Comet said.
“We have to make a break for it before they can cut us off,” Fog added.
“Plan is to run, then?” Frost asked. They all nodded. “Sounds good to me.”
“I’ll take point,” Fog said.
“Frost, take the middle,” Aprotelese said. “You have our best fighting asset, and you’ll be most effective with it in a safe spot.”
“Roger,” Frost said.
Fog took the front, Frost the middle, and Comet and Aprotelese formed a triangle with Fog so Frost was in the middle. The door would force them to leave out of that formation, but once they were in the hall, they would be able to advance freely, cutting down anyone who stood between them and the exit.
The group started to exit the room with Fog in front. Immediately as they left, a hail of crossbow bolts pounded against the walls right outside the room and cut into Fog from head to hoof, sending him instantly to the floor.
“Back! Back!” Aprotelese ordered.
Frost, Aprotelese, and Comet took cover at either side of the door. Fog was already gone, bolts puncturing his body all over the front. Comet looked down at him, cursed, then looked to Aprotelese.
“We gotta get him out!” he shouted.
“No time!” Frost shouted. “He’ll slow us down too much!”
“We aren’t leaving him behind!” Aprotelese yelled to Frost.
“We’re already leaving two of your stallions behind, whatever point you’re about to make is moot anyway!” Frost said. “If we try to drag him along, the best he’ll be is a temporary meat shield from the bolts before the gryphons catch us with their talons!”
Aprotelese looked at Fog’s body. “Dammit!” he shouted. “Dammit, dammit, dammit!”
“We have to go, NOW!” Frost shouted. He pulled out the last flashbang he and Duke had and pulled the pin to toss it outside. When it went, he waited for a second and braced himself for the loud bang, and when it sounded, he rushed out the door.
“Go go go!” Frost ordered.
He, Aprotelese, and Comet filed out of the room and Frost opened fire toward the source of the bolts. What he saw made his heart sink; there were at least ten of them on the opposite side of the room. With the gryphons flashed, though, it would be easy enough to take down most if not all of them with his rifle.
He was able to do just that, expending his entire magazine in the process, then reloaded while Aprotelese and Comet moved forward to check the hallway. They initially ran right at the entrance, then slid to a halt and rolled sideways. Before Frost could ask what was ahead, several bolts whizzed through the air past his head.
Frost got as low as he could and moved to the side, then ran to Aprotelese. Aprotelese looked to be pulling one of those explosive orbs out of his side pocket. Frost knew that he would have to open his mouth and cover his ears if they were about to do this, but he couldn’t communicate it to the stallions in time. Hopefully, they already knew.
Aprotelese had the orb in his hoof, ready to throw, when another volley of bolts came whizzing past. These ones were very different, though; when they struck the wall opposite them in the room, they detonated into small explosions. The small shockwaves startled the tiro, and Aprotelese dropped the orb. Frost watched as it armed itself and went to detonate as it rolled toward the hallway.
“Crap!” Frost shouted. He pulled Aprotelese back and kicked the orb like a football into the hall. As soon as it was on the other side of the wall, Frost prepared himself for the explosion. Aprotelese saw what he did and imitated it, but Comet was unable to see and simply waited.
The orb exploded in the hall, but not nearly far enough to kill the gryphons much further down. The volleys of bolts halted for a moment, but that moment was necessary to recover from the botched attempt at blowing up the enemies down the hall. By the time Frost and Aprotelese were good again, the exploding bolts were coming once again.
“What the hell was that!?” Aprotelese shouted.
“They must have put their explosives on the end of their bolts!” Frost shouted. “Whatever you do, don’t let them shoot near you!”
“Roger!” Aprotelese replied. “Comet, you hear that?!” Comet didn’t reply. “COMET!!”
Frost turned around to see Comet clutching his ears, grimacing. The stallion had not been prepared for the explosion, and the shockwave rattled his head as it blew through. Comet leaned up against the wall and stood, then looked to his teammates.
Frost was leaning out of cover to return fire on the enemy gryphons while Aprotelese tried to shout to him. Comet couldn’t hear anything, though, only a loud ringing in his ears.
Aprotelese cursed again. “Frost, we have to move!” he shouted.
“No shit, Sherlock!” Frost said.
“We have cover, so let’s make a plan!” Aprotelese said. “We need to have a strategy to move if we’re going to-“
Just as he was going to formulate a plan, a new round of bolts flew past, but this time, they brought a lot more payload with them. The bolts slammed into the back of the room against the wall and R&D door, creating shockwave after shockwave. None of them on their own were enough to take out eardrums, but they were making the team weaker with every volley.
Frost was getting a little suspicious, though. None of the bolts were hitting the walls around the hall, except the occasional one that didn’t follow the rest. Most of them were flying past them into the room.
Frost turned toward the doors to see what exactly they were shooting at. The walls were all cratered and cracked from the onslaught, but that wasn’t what concerned him. A large portion of the bolts had clearly landed on or near the R&D door like they were aiming at it.
Then it hit him.
“Aprotelese, they’re blowing open that door!” Frost shouted. He had figured out what was inside. “We need to move NOW!”
“What?” Aprotelese asked as he turned around.
Just as he turned, another group of bolts shot into the room and detonated against the door, finally blowing it completely open. This volley had been staggered, too, and more bolts flew into the open door through the dust. On the other side of the dust, the explosions rended a door on the other side of its hinges. The sound of scraping metal landing on a stone floor echoed through the room.
As soon as the sound was done, Frost and Aprotelese saw a cloud of green gas flowing from the room much more quickly than was safe. With no other choice, they paid no regard to the explosive bolts coming toward them from the other side and went for the run.
Comet ran with them as soon as he saw them go, and the trio advanced together. Frost kept his rifle up and fired on the gryphons as they ran, keeping them down as much as he could and taking out any that dared stand in the open. As nice as it would have been to take cover, the team couldn’t risk it with a cloud of deadly nerve gas following close behind. Frost didn’t know any green ones, but he wasn’t about to find out what the gas really was.
When they reached the end of the hall, they found two gryphons left alive, reloading their crossbows. Frost jumped on one and slammed the barrel of his rifle into its throat, crushing its windpipe and rumpling it to the floor. Aprotelese pulled his blade on the other, slicing it cleanly on its very thin arm, then spun and bucked it into the wall. From there, he hit it one more time and crushed its ribcage and spine against the wall. It could still breathe, though, but there was no time to finish it. The gas would have to take care of it.
And the gas would, as it was still advancing extremely quickly. Whatever containment they had of it here, it was clearly not very strong, as massive quantities of the deadly agent were spewing out of the door still. They had to just keep running; it was already halfway down the hall, and if they took too long, it would be on them and in them in no time.
The trio kept running and entered the cafeteria room they had passed through earlier. There were no gryphons visible in the room, but Frost remembered the ratholes under the carpets from earlier. He took the front this time, with Comet in the center and Aprotelese in the back. Comet had to be kept safer now, as his combat effectiveness was compromised.
Frost eyed the carpets as he passed them. Upon close inspection, he could see most of the nails and spikes that kept them in place were gone, and they sagged a little more than they did before, betraying what they were hiding. He couldn’t see into them, but he knew what that meant.
When they were halfway into the room, Frost had the team stop. He was standing right in front of one of the ratholes, and looked down at it resentfully. He knew what was on the other side, and he would be damned if they got the drop on him. Frost pointed his rifle down at the carpet and loosed four rounds into it. Underneath, he could hear the familiar sound of an enemy combatant eating a bullet.
“GO!” Frost shouted as he sprinted forward. Comet followed suit with Aprotelese right behind, and just as they hit the passage that would take them out of the caves, every carpet in the room exploded upward and gryphons climbed out of every hole.
Frost stopped and let Aprotelese and Comet run ahead while he stayed in place for a moment to suppress the gryphons as they came, killing enough of them to drive the rest to cover. When he expended his magazine, he turned and kept running, reloading along the way.
When Frost caught up to Aprotelese and Comet, he saw that they had, in turn, found Duke and Wolf. Their team of eight had been cut to five already, and from what Frost could see, leaving the way they came wasn’t an option. There were dozens of gryphons at the end of the hall, with bodies littering the entrance after Duke’s work with his MP7. Frost ran up to Duke and kept on eye on the rear.
“Duke!” Frost shouted.
“Frost, we got a serious problem!” Duke said.
“We got a hundred serious problems and they all look the same!” Aprotelese said. “Ugly and feathered!”
“We can’t get out the front, there’s too many of them!” Duke explained. “They just keep piling in!”
“We got an unknown number of hostiles coming at us from behind!” Frost said. “We can’t move forward, but if we stay here, we’ll get squished between them!”
“We have to find another way out!” Aprotelese said.
“Any ideas on where? I didn’t run past a way out where I went,” Duke said.
“Neither did we,” Frost said. “But we have to move now!”
Duke thought hard. The way he and Wolf went was a dead end, and if Frost had run back this way, it was quick to assume that if there was a way out for them, they couldn’t access it. But there had to be a way out. These gryphons weren’t stupid; they must have designed the place with an extra way out. Of course, there was the way that Moon Moon and Mosquito went…
“Alright, looks like we have to go back into the cave!” Duke announced. He turned from the entrance to see a dozen gryphons pouring down Frosts hall toward them and opened fire, knocking some down and giving the rest pause. “We have to follow Moon Moon and Mosquito’s route! It’s our best chance!”
“Roger that!” Frost replied.
Duke took the front of the group, followed by Comet and Wolf, then Frost and Aprotelese. Frost kept an eye on the rear while they ran from the overwhelming enemy force, keeping the gryphons from getting too close with bursts from his rifle. Duke would clear the way ahead as they ran.
The team went down Duke’s first passage, then followed the path Moon Moon and Mosquito had followed when they split up. As the team started to make its way down the middle passage, more gryphons filed in from behind, and some even came from Duke and Wolf’s original route, forcing Wolf and Aprotelese to pull their blades for a close-in fight. Frost took down one gryphon with a few shots of his rifle, and Aprotelese and Wolf worked together to slice up the other. A few more could be heard down the hall, so the team hauled it down the passage.
The passage was small and not permitting of such a large group, forcing them to file through such that they would be highly vulnerable as they exited. When they reached the end of the hall, they walked into the last type of room they had expected; an enormous, open-air room that led outside on each side, with one side exiting to the side they originally assaulted from. At least, they thought it did.
But the surprise room had even more surprises in it. There were dozens upon dozens of enemy gryphons in the room, moving crates and boxes to provide cover from the team they no doubt expected to show up. Duke and Frost immediately opened fire on the enemy gryphons in the hopes of thinning their ranks a bit while the stallions advanced into the room.
When the stallions were behind cover, the men followed close behind and joined them just as the bolts started to fly. None of these gryphons were using explosive bolts, thankfully, but that didn’t make the job of escaping much easier.
“Does anyone have an explosive orb?” Duke asked.
“Negative, all out!” Aprotelese said.
“Damn!” Duke cursed. He peeked out of cover to shoot back at the enemy gryphons. Next to him, Frost was already opening fire in the opposite direction against enemy forces coming in from behind.
“We have to move forward!” Frost shouted.
Without reply, the rest of the team did as Frost said and started moving into the room. The openings up top would be nearly impossible for the men to get to without an aerial pegasus extraction, or at least help from the Nighthawks. That, itself, wasn’t possible, though, not with such an enemy presence in the room. No one was coming to save them in here.
“Frost, we need to set up a defensible position!” Duke shouted.
“Copy that!” Frost replied. “If we can get to a side of the room and set up some box walls, we maybe able to-“ Before Frost finished, a loud siren started blaring from the middle of the room, likely audible through most of the valley. “What the heck!?”
Aprotelese looked to where the siren was sounding from with a look of utter horror. The other Nighthawks shared similar expressions, and even a number of gryphons had paused. Just as the men thought the battle would continue to rage, what must have been twenty gryphons abandoned the fight and flew out of the holes up top, leaving a still large number to contend with.
“Aprotelese, what’s happening!?” Duke asked.
“They… They alerted everything in the valley to the presence of this facility…” Aprotelese said. “The dragons…”
Duke felt a chill go down his spine. “Don’t tell me…”
“We need to get out of here NOW!” Aprotelese shouted in a complete panic.
Before they could discuss how to go about that, bolts were flying once more, and the team had to take cover behind some boxes to fire back. The gryphons coming into the room were equipped with explosive bolts, though, so the wooden crates didn’t provide much cover before they were totally obliterated.
The team ran from cover to cover for protection from the explosive bolts, trying to find a good opportunity to fire back. No such opportunity existed, though, and Duke and Frost were forced to expose themselves to make an attempt at well-placed shots to take out the explosive launching gryphons. Bolts whizzed past their heads every time they stood up, some detonating in the distance behind them.
“Duke, Frost, I’m gonna contact the extraction teams!” Wolf shouted.
“Roger that!” Duke replied.
Wolf keyed his communicator. “Echo One, this is Nighthawk Four, we are taking heavy fire up the mountainside! We might not make the extraction! How copy?” There was no response. “Echo One! Nighthawk Four! We will not make the extraction!”
“Don’t we have an aerial extract?!” Frost shouted.
Wolf keyed a new signal. “Whiskey Bravo, this is Nighthawk Four! We can’t make the extraction point at the base of the valley, need an immediate extraction at the top of the mountain!” After a moment of static, the voice of what seemed like an angel played.
“Nighthawk Four, Earth Pony extract is KIA! Gryphon forces are swarming the valley!” the voice said, making Wolf pause. “We heard the siren and are trying to get to you, but hostile forces are in the way!”
“How many gryphons?” Wolf asked.
“Not gryphons!” the voice replied with terror.
Wolf felt a chill go down his spine. “Copy that,” he said.
Duke ran over to Wolf. “What’s the word?” he asked.
“We have to leave this room to get an extract! There’s dragons in the area keeping the extraction team out!”
“How long until the dragons get here?” Duke asked.
“They’re already here,” Wolf said, looking past Duke.
Duke turned around to see the most terrifying thing ever to grace his eyes. Several large dragons, at least ten feet tall each, landed inside the room and made the earth shake. When they landed, Frost, Aprotelese, and Comet all hid behind some boxes, prompting Duke and Wolf to follow suit.
Duke peeked over the boxes to see the dragons, enraged and ready to kill, turning their attention to the gryphons on the other side of the room. They spewed flames at the unprepared birds like fire hoses, caking the entire wall with flames. Duke saw the opportunity and decided they should take it.
“Wolf, can you carry me out of here?” Duke asked. Wolf looked up and down, then nodded. “New plan!” Duke grabbed Wolf and the two of them ran to the rest of the team.
“Duke, this doesn’t look good,” Frost said.
“Well, we’re leaving!” Duke said. “Aprotelese, you carry Frost! Wolf is carrying me, and Comet will fly on his own. We’re heading out through that hole-“ Duke pointed at the hole the dragons entered through- “And getting to the extraction team!”
“Sounds good to me!” Aprotelese said. Before Frost could say anything, he was behind the man and had his hooves under Frost’s armpits. “Let’s go!”
“Wolf, get me up and let’s get moving!” Duke ordered.
While the plan would work; the Nighthawks were strong enough; it would take them a moment to actually fly to the opening. The men themselves weren’t that massive, but with all the gear they wore, they were incredibly heavy. The Nighthawks had trained to carry a fully laden Earth Pony Juggernaut, though, which was way heavier than any human.
They were nearly at the top when one of the dragons below looked up to see them making their escape. For a moment, the dragon just looked at them, confused, but quickly alerted its kin to the pony presence. As far as they were concerned, this was just more foreigners encroaching on their territory, and they had to be dealt with.
They spewed flames up, but thankfully, with gravity and distance, the fire just didn’t reach them. Duke and Frost fired at the dragons with their weapons, but the dense scales were too much for the bullets to get through. The dragons flinched when they were shot, but guns wouldn’t do anything more than that.
Comet had flown ahead and checked the outside area to find an absolute war zone outside. Enormous dragons, though not many, were around the mountains, roasting anyone they found. The pegasus extraction team was up high in the sky, avoiding the fight, and the bloodcurdling screams of dying gryphons filled the valley. They had to get out of there as soon as possible.
Comet looked down to the team to see the men uselessly firing their weapons at the dragons, who were already taking flight to knock them and the rest of the team out of the sky. They weren’t that fast, but with the heavy burden of the men, it would be easy to catch them. They were dead if they were caught.
Comet snarled as he took flight one last time and dove into the hole. Beneath him, he could see Aprotelese and Wolf struggling to carry the men out of the room and the dragons looking excitedly at their next prey. But they wouldn’t be getting a chance at that prey.
Comet shot past his teammates and slammed into the first of the dragons that was coming after them. He struck it with such a force that he was able to knock the wind right out of its fiery lungs and send it to the floor in a heap of groaning scales. The other dragons saw the pegasus stallion take out their friend and roared their displeasure. With a fierce war cry, Comet pulled out his blades and put everything he had into saving his team.
Up topside, Aprotelese and Wolf dropped the men onto the mountainside and huffed and panted their exhaustion. Before letting that stop them, though, they both rushed to the edge of the hole.
“Comet!” Aprotelese shouted as he looked over the edge.
It was too late, though; Comet was gone. He had knowingly given his life to ensure that his teammates and the men escaped safely. The kind of thing that earns one the Crest of Valor.
“Comet…” Wolf said quietly.
“We have to go,” Aprotelese said grimly. The stallions turned away from the hole. “But we won’t forget.”
They walked back over to the men, who by now had gotten back and surveyed the landscape. Fire and death reigned supreme on this day, with little hope for anyone in the valley. Gryphons still roamed the area, with many of them actually fighting back against the dragons, though it was all in vain.
“Where to?” Duke asked of Wolf.
“We have to move south, there’s a plateau that the carriage can land on,” Wolf said.
“Alright, let’s get moving!” Duke ordered.
The team ran for it to the south in the hopes of making it to the plateau in time for an extraction. They knew that the dragons would be exiting that cave very quickly behind and giving chase, but with a little luck, they would be able to outrun them, or at least fall down the side of the mountain faster than they could fly.
They were only a hundred yards from the hole when the dragons emerged and began their scan for the intruding warfighters. They could see plenty of gryphons flying about, and they would be easy enough to take down, but these other ones were cut from a different cloth. They would be way more interesting to face off against. Unfortunately, the dragons had missed their mark, and would have to settle for the gryphons they could find instead of the ponies who would likely get away now.
That didn’t make the escape much easier for the team. Massive dragons still roamed the valleys and mountains, roasting any living thing that wasn’t a dragon. If one of the big guys saw them, it was game over.
It was that, plus the gryphons, who were still intent on removing the Nighthawks and men from the picture of this war. The men had to scan the sky while also watching their step and keeping their balance. The entire act was a lot to put on any person, however tough they were, especially when they were at the limits of their endurance, battered and bloodied.
It didn’t take long for the fight to resume.
“Frost, twelve o’clock high!” Duke shouted.
The two men stopped moving and trained their weapons upward toward a group of four gryphons dive bombing toward them, firing crossbow bolts as they approached. The bolts, tipped with more explosives, all missed by a wide margin, shaking the earth around the men and making the shots more difficult. The men, however, were able to fire continuously for thirty and forty rounds, thanks to the thirty round STANAG magazines in Frost’s rifle and forty round MP7 magazines.
Dust flew up from the detonating bolts, all of which landed a good distance away but shook the men with the explosions, and the men got back on the move. The Nighthawks kept on running ahead, unable to combat the gryphons overhead.
The explosions, however, attracted the attention of about every combatant in the general vicinity. More gryphons turned their attention to where the team was now, changing whatever direction they were initially heading and swooping in on the team.
“How many freaking gryphons are there?!” Frost asked.
“There won’t be any more here by the end of the day either way!” Duke answered. Either they or the dragons would take care of them.
Duke and Frost had to shoot while running now to avoid being overrun. More than a few times, they had to drop down and slide while shooting to avoid being caught in one place when they shot back at the gryphons. They were still shooting bolts at them, some explosive and some not, but the shots kept on getting closer and closer, despite how many gryphons were dropping out of the sky and slamming into the mountainside.
Up ahead, the men could see the plateau, and Wolf and Aprotelese in a tight battle against a force that vastly outnumbered them. The exhaustion they were suffering from was visible now, and the gryphons were just biding their time until the Nighthawks fell.
When Duke and Frost were about one hundred and fifty yards from the stallion’s location, their saving grace came like an angel from Heaven; the aerial extraction carriage descended from the sky with an escort of twelve ponies from the 22nd Rapid Assault… Prosecution… whatever battalion. The best flyers they had.
The men kept on running downhill toward the extraction. Along the way, more and more bolts rained down on them, most of them missing, but a few hitting home on Frost’s chest plate. Thankfully, the armor they wore was incredibly strong and stopped bullets, so a crossbow bolt couldn’t go through very easily. Frost pulled a couple of the bolts out and dropped them to the ground so they wouldn’t be in the way.
The men landed on the flat area of rock and bolted for the carriage. Just as they were about to reach it, though, all Hell broke loose; one of those massive dragons that was previously cooking gryphons on one of the other mountains had flown over to the enormous commotion to get the most out of its fire.
The dragon landed in between the men and the carriage, and, with a ferocious roar that deafened everyone around, began its onslaught. The extraction carriage pulled out with the Nighthawks, but had to leave the men on the plateau to fend for themselves.
The 22nd stallions formed up and started to fight back against the massive beast, aggressively flying formations around it and hitting it with weapons the men knew nothing about. They were some kind of specialized shock weapon that kept the dragon nice and busy.
In the meantime, Duke and Frost were hightailing it away from that location and going back toward the slope and keying their comms.
“Aprotelese, what the hell is going on!?” Duke screamed into his communicator.
“That dragon is gonna kill us all if we try to get you out here!” Aprotelese responded, clearly more than a little shaken. “We have to get you to a different spot if we’re gonna get you out!”
“Where the hell do we go?!” Frost asked. “Not like there’s a safe landing pad around here!”
“You have to make your way up the slope and to the top of the mountain!” Aprotelese said. “There’s a flat top up there we can land on to get you!”
“Then that’s where we’re heading!” Duke said. “We’ll meet you there!” It was all or nothing now; if this plan failed, the men were on their own.
“This isn’t exactly how I expected this op to go down!” Frost said as they began the climb. Thankfully, the gryphons were a little busy alongside the 22nd against the fire-breathing beast behind them to notice the men making their exit.
“I didn’t expect a total shitshow, that’s for sure!” Duke said.
In spite of how much their bodies were screaming at them to stop, the men pushed onward up the mountainside. With all the adrenaline running through them, they were able to make it back to their initial exit point relatively quickly, and it helped that they had used a good amount of their ammo, lightening the loads they carried. Of course, they still had a ways to go, as it turned out the mountain went quite a bit higher.
The men kept up the run, but soon, the familiar sound of bolts against stone rang in their ears. The men turned around to see more gryphons chasing them, firing their crossbows at them in an attempt to stop them. At this point, it must have been more for revenge than gaining an actual tactical advantage. How many gryphons had already died trying to kill them?
Duke and Frost started shooting back as they backed up along the slope, massively slowing their progress. The bolts wouldn’t go through their plates, as they had seen, but if they were caught in the legs, it would take them down for sure.
It also didn’t help that explosive bolts made yet another appearance.
“I hate those things,” Frost said as a bolt went off two meters to his right.
“Frost, run ahead and I’ll cover!” Duke said.
“Roger!” Frost replied.
Frost turned around and ran ahead while Duke lay down covering fire, knocking down several gryphons of a seemingly unending number of them. If nothing else, this operation had successfully thinned their numbers by a massive margin. They hadn’t gotten OGA, but the princesses certainly stood to gain from this mission.
Frost stopped up ahead and started shooting back, and Duke turned around to take his turn to run. The gryphons were getting closer every time they switched, but it was better than the alternative of them closing in on them completely in a matter of minutes.
Duke could hear the bullets whizzing past, cutting through the air like butter. He almost thought he heard the sound of a bullet colliding with a bolt, but the odds of that happening were extremely slim.
When Duke ran past Frost, he tapped him on the shoulder. The top of the mountain was in sight now, and the carriage was just landing up there, away from hostile forces. That was their ticket out.
Duke stopped and started firing back, and Frost turned around to run and reload his rifle again. When he looked up and saw the carriage, he ran with renewed vigor, eager to leave this hellish place.
Before he could make it past Duke, an explosive bolt landed just under his legs.
Frost didn’t have the air in his lungs to respond verbally to the assault, but he did completely lose his footing and his face slammed into the dirt. His rifle hung by its sling by his side.
“FROST!” Duke shouted.
With his weapon pointed forward and one hand on the ground to stabilize himself, Duke slid down to where Frost lay. Frost used his arms to turn himself over and cover his face, but right after he did, another explosive bolt, a smaller one, landed on his chest plate, slamming him into the ground again. When Duke stopped at his side, Frost was coughing furiously and gasping for breath.
“Frost!” Duke said.
Frost blinked several times a she looked up at Duke. His hearing was damaged, but he could hear Duke shouting his name. He knew the gryphons were still coming at them, so he reached around for his rifle, and when he found it, he used his stronger arm that hadn’t taken a small explosion to aim it at the enemy and open fire.
Duke grabbed Frost by his vest and started dragging him uphill. It wasn’t looking good; the gryphons were closing on them, and both men were forced to fire their primary weapons with one arm. It didn’t take long for Frost to click empty, and, unable to reload, he let his rifle fall to his side and pulled out his sidearm and started shooting.
“We’re almost there!” Duke shouted. By now, Frost’s hearing had returned some.
Frost looked down at his legs; they were hanging in ways he never thought he would see them hang, going in several directions he never thought possible. He could also feel the pressure of an effectively totaled rib cage under his armor.
“How am I gonna explain this one to Amel?” Frost sputtered out.
“I don’t know, man, that’s up to you!” Duke replied.
The gryphons were still coming. There were so many of them, and Duke had also been forced to pull out his sidearm to fight back. Frost was already clicking empty again and trying to reload with one hand, not an easy thing to do in a state like his. Duke had to make well-placed shots to maximize the use he got from his pistol; as far as he was concerned, right now, he had the rest of his life to make those shots the best he had ever made.
Just when it looked like they would be overrun, the 22nd boys came screeching through the air, raining hell on the gryphons and taking most of them out in a single wave. The remaining gryphons scattered, leaving Duke enough time to get both his hands on Frost to drag him all the way up to the carriage and get the hell out of there.
“My legs,” Frost said in between coughs.
“We’re almost there,” Duke said.
“How am I gonna keep being a PJ?” Frost asked.
“The princesses are magical, Frost,” Duke replied. They reached the top. “They’ll keep you going.”
Aprotelese and Wolf were inside the carriage and opened the rear door for the men to enter through. When Duke dragged Frost through, he dragged him all the way to the other end and set him against the wall, keeping his head up, and immediately went about treating Frost’s legs. There was not a doubt in his mind that they were bleeding severely from the damage they took.
“I’m glad that’s over,” Aprotelese said.
“It ain’t over until we’re well out of here,” Duke said.
Frost chuckled and coughed. “True that,” he said.
“Doesn’t talking hurt?” Duke asked.
“Yeah…” Frost said in a long, drawn out reply.
“Well, don’t worry, I’m gonna patch you up,” Duke said reassuringly. Frost nodded his head down and tried to avoid coughing more. Busted ribs will make you do that.
“Aprotelese, get into my med kit and give me anything I ask for,” Duke said. Aprotelese obeyed and set himself up as Duke’s assistant, and they set to work.
“Man, you guys can take a Hell of a beating,” Wolf commented as he watched.
“Damn right,” Duke answered. “We’re PJs, and the SEALs can kiss my ass. Eh, Frost?”
No response.
“Frost?” Duke asked in a worried tone. Frost’s head was hanging low, so he couldn’t see his face. With a single, deft movement, Duke raised Frost’s chin up and saw blood coming from his mouth and his eyes glassed over. He wasn’t breathing.
“Frost?” Duke asked again. Still no response.
He shook his partner a bit, but the expression on his face remained the same, as iff it was chiseled from ice. Duke started tearing away at the gear his partner was wearing, removing every last piece of it, until he was able to cut away his shirt underneath. The skin was heavily bruised and pulped from the trauma of the explosion.
With tears streaming down his face, Duke put his hand on his best friend’s helmet and dragged them down to shut his eyes.
“Frost…”